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tv   History Bookshelf Jeff Guinn Go Down Together  CSPAN  May 25, 2019 4:00pm-4:46pm EDT

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jeff gwynn talks about his book, "go down together: the true, untold story of bonnie and clyde ." he recounts their criminal exploits that entertained the american public during the great depression and contends that bonnie and clyde were inept crooks throughout their crime spree. this was recorded at the kansas city public library in kansas city, missouri in 2009. thank you for coming out tonight. it is called out and starting to rain and you are all hoping i will talk fast so you can get home and watch missouri get into the elite eight. i think they well. -- well -- will. to start this evening off, you have just seen a magnificent movie, that has been part of american lore.
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a book about bonnie and clyde is to enter into great controversy. there are some new theories and rumors. -- so many theories and rumors. laying the worst, most vile and untrue rumor to rest. i am not the twin brother of war and beatty. -- warren beatty. i give him a lot of credit. he made a heck of a movie. it is brilliant and i like watching it. i'm sure you do too. -- fact remains that it is it simply extended the mythology of a story that at its root, tells us an awful lot, not just kids who told -- to poor were, but the way our culture rewritesquite often history to fit what we want to believe or at a certain time, we
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need to believe. it is true that i did not intend to write this book. books are like children, they grow up to be whatever you want to be. you don't have much control over it. my original plan was to write a about driving around america and going to places, iconic places come up places where people who have become a huge part of our culture have you -- for reputed to do things they had not done. i thought i would start by going to west allis. bonnie and clyde grew up there. it is a short drive from where i live. days, i calledof my editor and said that this has to be a book about bonnie and clyde. i was learning things that staggered me, things that i had never imagined before. i imagine some of you out here
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tonight are longtime bonnie and clyde scholars. one man who is done wonderful things, including studying the platte city shootout. we know platte city. it is the garden spot outside kansas city where your airport is now located. it is also where bonnie and clyde and their criminal career began to be extinguished. that was the beginning of the end. the thing i thought i needed -- that needed to be done in this to mythere have been knowledge, 27 previous books written about bonnie and clyde that come from a repeat of -- reputable publisher. i have read everyone i can get my hands on. very few have context. the great historian stephen
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ambrose used to say that he wrote books to answer one question. was, how did they do that? ambrose washen writing about the transcontinental railroad organizing d-day, the purpose of his books was how was it done? "go down together: the true, untold story of bonnie and clyde ," is my 14th book. i tried to answer a question two. what it is a different one. what i've always wanted to understand is why did they do that? that is where context comes in. the case of bonnie and clyde and the legend that has grown and been refurbished and reshaped 75 years after their death. it seems to me there are two wise to be answered -- whys to b e answered. the first is why did two kids
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from a slum who were two of the most incompetent leaves to ever pull a gun and say stick it out, who were the antithesis of glamour, why did they choose, quite knowingly, to embarq on a on aof crime -- embark life of crime that would bring them fleeting fame that had to and with their violence deaths. they knew this was coming. they were willing to have this happen. why? the second question. america embrace bonnie and clyde? why did they become national ,cons following the footsteps not just of billy the kid and jesse james, but charles lindbergh, babe ruth, jack dempsey. why did that happen?
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there are two parts to the book. if we understand them and where they came from, maybe we start to understand the rest. barrow and bonnie parker were products of a place called west allis, that was a hellhole outside of the city of dallas. powerbrokers very much wanted to create a city that rivaled san francisco corporate culture. they did not want riffraff. what henrys exactly barrow, clyde's father was, when he arrived in 1922 with his wife, his three of his children -- his three youngest children, looking for work, because they had failed as tenant farmers. allis,rows lived in west
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not just in a slum, but in a tent city that was built in a marshy piece of land on the west side of the trinity river. adults andilential, children died regularly from all kinds of diseases they caught. luckieste who were lived in tents. the barrows could not afford a tent. they slept underneath the wagon they rode in on. sandwiches made which were then called west allis round steak, which means baloney. when there was baloney, they ate stale bread. the christmas presents that the barricades got were oranges. they were born in a time when a economic levelhe in which he was born.
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if you were born poor white trash, you pretty much stayed there. clyde barrow was an ambitious kid. he was a gifted musician. he played the guitar and the saxophone. his sister used to say that her idea of heaven was clyde playing melancholy baby. he was 16hool when and did what kids of his upbringing did. he went to work in a factory for one dollar a day. he realized that was it. he could look across the trinity river and you would have the gleaming skyscrapers of dallas. you could scare up a dime, and could go to a movie and see people wearing fancy close and driving beautiful cars. every other kid in west dallas, he wanted to wear sunday close during the week. he was something of a ladies man. he liked to date girls, and the girls' parents would let them go out with trash like him.
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even other west allis them is looked down on the barrows because henry barrow was a trash man. the barrows where the lowest of the low. that was the life of clyde barrow. he decided he would supplement his income. he first started stealing chickens, then he graduated to cars. bank barrow was a bumbling robber, but that boy could steal a car like nobody's business. in those days, afford with cost you $260 brand-new. if he could steal one and sell it, he might make $100. this is in the depression. that is good money. that is clyde barrow. bonnie elizabeth parker, born in texas, a west texas town, her mother, emma parker is a social climber like you would not believe. society, there are no women that are determined that their families will be the blue blooded just -- blue
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bloodedest as of all. and the parker was like that. rowena was a farming community. bonnie's father was a brick mason. that madema saw it, them royalty and 8 -- she raised her little girl to believe that. the first mark that bonnie ever made was made when she was three years old when a tent revival meeting came to rowena and some of the little children were invited on stage to sing their favorite hymns. there, raised her eyes to the lord and saying the honky-tonk tune "he's a devil in his own hometown." she got a standing ovation. from that moment, she -- her expressed desire was to be one of two things. to be anither going actress on broadway, or she was going to be one of those ubiquitous, world-famous
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millionaire poets. she wrote a lot of poetry. we see that she had a stuttering sense of rhythm, but she loved quotation marks. she use them every other word. ,he will be royalty in rowena except her father dies unexpectedly when she is three years old. some people said he got sick and tired of emma and ran off. we don't know for sure. to move, withs her three young children to west dallas to live with her parents. there, the family descends into poverty. and like it's job selling overalls. her pay was seven dollars a week. bonnie elizabeth parker, a bright young women, faces this. she stays in high school and graduates, it makes no difference. there is no money for college. for the poor and west dallas, these are your career choices. you can sling hash, work as a
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maid, or be a prostitute. those are the things she had to choose among. she went for choice number four. when bonnie was 15 years old, she married a man named roy thorton. he was just a few years older than her. bonnie believed in movie romances. thought that if she married roy, she would have a lifetime of poverty, but true love area it did not work out that way. he beat her continually. he disappeared for weeks on end. he deserted her finally. she never divorced him. if faye dunaway wasn't wearing a ring in the scene you just saw, that was a mistake. bonnie parker wore her running wing -- wedding ring for the rest of her life. she was working as a waitress when roy left. there's a strong possibility she was occasionally turning tricks. she was not doing this to be promiscuous.
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she was doing it to feed herself and her family. 1930, january, there is a party in west dallas. parkerarrow and bonnie get there, see each other, that is it. everything else about them has been exaggerated or fictionalized. they were not great crocs. they were not glamorous. they loved each other. it was a real love story. they were instantly attracted, and because of that, they were inseparable to -- until three weeks later, when clyde was arrested for car theft and sentenced for 14 years in prison in texas. clyde barrow is 22 years old. he is sent to easton prison farm, a hellhole. prisoners there are treated like slaves, worked until they drop. it is in prison that clyde barrow kills his first man.
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and crowder, a present trustee who have been raping clyde in prison for almost a year. he caved his head in with a pipe. not long after that, clyde, who didn't think he would survive working in those fields for 14 years, did something other convicts would do. the blood thelled hand, convicts would take a how offsk -- hoe or axe and cut their lands. he cut off some toes and was crippled and went badly for the rest of his life. this will tell you something about clyde barrow. he did that on a monday. on tuesday, he found out his mother had gotten him pardoned and he was able to go home. he links back to dallas. mps back to dallas, meets bonnie, makes noise about going straight, but it didn't happen
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that way. in those days, you could get arrested for suspicion and called into jail for questioning. the dallas police did not want a bad guy like clyde barrow back stealing cars. they would make a habit of pulling him in every day. they would take in, interrogate him and that he would have to walk back for our five miles to whatever he was working. usually he would get fired. we have access to two unpublished manuscripts from his mother and his sister. we know from them that clyde decided that going straight wasn't going to work. he and bonnie decided to embark on a life of crime. they hated their lives. they knew inevitably they would come to a bad end. they thought it was worth it. i won't regale you with the stories of what awful thieves they were. job, theyrst big
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ended up getting their getaway car stuck in the mud. they tried to escape riding mules. they got pitched into the mud. they got surrounded by angry townspeople. clyde left bonnie there, ran away. and held inrrested prison for three months until the grand jury decides she was some silly girl who was senselessly and had gotten pulled into sin and they released her. comedy ife slapstick not for one thing. people died. bonnie and clyde came from horrible backgrounds, but understand there isfor what they did. there are lots of poor kids who aspired to great things and did not try to get them by robbing, and in the case of the barrow gang, they had been accused of as many by -- but as many as 70 murders. by my count, a love and people died at there -- 11 people died
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at their hands. it was because they got stuck in stupid situations. they tried to shoot their way out of situations and people died. look where they were coming from. why did they get famous? why did america embrace them? inadvertently, accidentally, their timing was perfect. it was the depths of the depression. i want you to imagine something that is almost impossible. it's a terrible recession. in 1932. people barely have money for rent. want is they want some entertainment to get their minds off their problems. the industry that everyone believed would disappear was newspapers. can you imagine a time when people were not such to newspapers anymore? it boggles the mind. that was happening. the media wanted some kind of
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story they could print that would make people keep buying newspapers. the public wanted entertainment. the only thing going successfully with the talkies, the new movies, jimmy cagney blasting people with a machine gun. try to imagine a time when people thought the banks were the enemy. i don't know if you can. if it is possible, work with me. at first, parts of oklahoma, new mexico, the papers start writing about the will of the west bandit, clyde barrow, who can disappear like smoke and the glamorous young woman at his side. it worked ok. until the day in a place called joplin. in west texas, if kids had a nickel, one of their victories
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was too good to fair park in dallas. you could get three pictures for a nickel. the kids would pose. the girls would wear goofy hats and have parasols. the boys would point those true b rubber guns where the barrel would point at the ground. clyde and bonnie used to love that. when they were out as real criminals, they kept posing for these funny pictures just like they did in west dallas. only now, they had real guns. bonniespring of 1933, did a salacious thing. the barrows were traveling with a criminal mastermind named w d jones. he was 16 and such a cold-blooded thug that he was afraid of the dark and that night would insist on sleeping with bonnie and clyde's of the boogie man wouldn't get him. that is absolutely true. o look like a big man, wd
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tried smoking cigars. big stogies that stuck a foot out of his mouth. we are assuming he coughed a lot. we were not there and can only assume. fun,e one day, just for put her leg up on the bumper of a car and a rather unladylike pose, dangled a hassle from her hand, stuck a cigar between her lips. they took a picture and forgot about it. later, the gang is renting an apartment in joplin, missouri, where they do usual dumb thing of calling attention to themselves unnecessarily. in theory, they are hiding out. they keep parking a series of new fancy stolen cars in front. they come and go at all hours of the night. ae day, clyde is cleaning rifle, pulls the trigger and fires of burst into the next house. i guess they thought the neighbors would not notice.
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the neighbors called the joplin police, who came to the conclusion there must be some bootleggers at work. posse withgether a minimal planning and tried to surround the place. clyde and bonnie and the beauty, clyde's brother, and his sister-in-law got away. two officers were killed. the police went into the apartment, they found a lot of belongings and possessions begetting have left behind, including an undeveloped roll of film area -- film. they developed it and there was the picture. if clyde were here right now, he would be firing of burst the browning automatic rifle, but he would miss. would kill other innocent spectators. thank god he is not here. in this film, there was one picture above all. this is how perfect bonnie and clyde's timing word.
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there was something newfangled called the wire service. a picture could run in a newspaper one day and be in every other newspaper in the country the next. that picture of bonnie with a cigar hanging out of her mouth was transmitted nationwide. readers may not have known what the term freudian implication meant, but they got it anyway. days, the barrow gang had tolved from regional rumor national icon. they were embraced. the country loved them. they could not get off of them and the media played to that by publishing all caps of stories. if they were rumored to be anywhere, that story ran as fact. on it went, but not too long. there's a reason for that. city, the beginning of the end came, when for the first time, law officers led by a great law man named hold coffee
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coffey, when properly armed and surrounded the barrow gang. they should have been caught there. they were trapped at the red crown tavern, except in armored and armored car was supposed to be blocking a driveway. he suffered a wound, panicked and backed out. that gave clyde a chance to escape. otherwise, the never would've happened. -- that never would've happened. bonnie and clyde believed they lived this long and evaded that many lawmen because they were criminal masterminds. nothing could be further from the truth. most local law were farmers or local boys who needed a job and got elected and were paid $50 a week. they had to supply their own guns, usually 22 pistols that they shut apartments with and their own cars, often farm trucks.
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clyde may have been a row seat -- lousy cook, but stole wonderful cars. he had browning automatic rifles. did there was on corneille pursuit, -- uncoordinated pursuit, they could drive away or should their way out. fey wrote the game plan for how to take them down. it was taken up by the most famous texas ranger of all, eimer at the end of january 1934. he was a famous texas ranger, who at the time, he agreed to go after bonnie and clyde was credited with killing over 50 criminals, 17 time -- wounded 17 counts himself. he was such a hero that is gone had a nickname. he called his pistol old lucky. to put bonnie and clyde in the ground. he told his troops the best way to enforce the law is a bullet
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in the gut. that's what he did. there has been controversy since whether the last member of the barrow gang set of bonnie and clyde. we got very lucky in this project by finding a man, who in the 1970's, had made a number of interviews with the family, so we know what happened. on may 23, 1934, six lawmen set up an ambush for bonnie and clyde, who had been tricked into coming that way. the lawmen fired 160 shots. clyde died instantly. the whole thing took 16 seconds. after clyde died, bonnie had time to see what was going to happen. she screamed, she died. as one of the dow's deputies involved in the ambush said later, when we were done, they were nothing but a pile of wet rags. and yet, they were even more
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popular in death than in life. 10,000 people attended clyde's funeral, 20,000 bodies. bonnie's family bragged that the dallas newsboys checked in $100 to buy a big bouquet of flowers for all the extra copies the barrow gang had sold for them. true crime magazines kept the lead -- legend going for years after that. barrow, having served her jail sentence, is at home in the dallas -- a salas suffered. -- dallas suburb. beaty approaches her and says he would like to pay her for the use of her name and the story of bonnie and clyde. she is excited and has enough money to build a fence around her property. andty shows are a script tells her but the wonderful actors in the cast. anche got the idea that this
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faye dunawaynamed was going to play her. she couldn't wait to see the movie. the premier comes. blanche struts in. she watches the movie. the movie is over. announces,nds up and that movie made me look like a [expletive].se's let's face it, she was right. they tried to suit the studio. the judge throughout all of those losses. heimer's without one a settlement because it tried to make it look like he had a grudge against the barrow gang, because he made them look so foolish, when he never saw them until the day he killed them.
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here we are. 75 years later. the image burnishing continues. there will be every make. -- a remake. i know that serious actor -- a actress named hilary duff is going to play body. i have heard from someone involved. i said, i hope this book will stick to the history. that will sell a lot of popcorn. people will be interested. they said, here is the thing. we are going to have a surprise ending. [laughter] jeff: yep. here's the thing. why do we write books about history? our purpose ought to be to have some record of what really
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happened. that's why i love to read about history as well as write about it. something that answers the questions why did these things happen? i don't claim that this book will ever be the definitive book , because when you're writing about history, no book is definitive. it has some new things in it. will comeomeone else along and find some thing i missed and build on it. we have to try. when you write history, and you weren't there, basically, what you are trying to do is make the best educated guess you can. -- guess you can. every time i say i want you to know why. beyond that, when he read the book, i hope you think about this. could bonnie and clyde be an excellent example of how, in our
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different times of trouble, we invent things that perhaps did not exist? we make people become what we want them to be and not who they were. learn a lot about ourselves from what happened with bonnie and clyde. meanwhile, the story goes on. they will continue to interest us and upsets some of us. ift may not be a bad thing we learn from some of the mistakes they made. some of the reasons we created some of the exaggerations that we have. maybe there are some folks would like to ask a question or two? this looks like a great crowd. two weeks and i wouldn't be able to tell my wife i get home tomorrow that he got the best questions in kansas city. you don't want me saying it was minneapolis. we are setting up microphones. if you have a question, come to
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the microphone. wondering why they called it lacks city, iowa -- platte city, iowa. jeff: because they were damn fools. [laughter] hi, i was curious on blanche barrow, because when i saw the whereyears ago, you saw she was in the hospital and then chopped off the face of the earth. to know what happened to her? -- do you know what happened to her? jeff: she wrote a very obscure memoir that is wonderful. if you can find a used copy, you should. city, buck had been shot, the barrows fled to iowa, where they were surrounded and captured. died and blanche was
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brought back to stand trial for shooting a firearm during platte city, which she always swore she did too. she got 10 years in prison. she served her time and came back to texas and remarried. ladyas a beer drinking old who was known after she had had a sixpack or two to start talking about how bonnie was jealous because blanche was prettier. it could have been true. she sold the rights to her name for the movie, but if she had been a consultant on the movie, faye dunaway would have played her. she did not appreciate the movie. do notlater years, you want to mention it around her after she had had a drink or two. jeff: there is one little problem.
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the letter was signed clyde champion barrow. clyde's name was clyde chestnut barrow. that hely always swore would not have put a different name there. i would say that henry ford thought the letter was real. he wrote clyde a thank you note and sent it to general delivery and tulsa, where clive letter had been postmarked. henry ford is going, that barrow boy may have been a killer, but he had great manners and taste in cars. >> [inaudible question] jeff: there are three cars making the rounds as the real death car. the real death car currently is owned by a casino. it is on display outside of las vegas. here is an interesting story about that.
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the posse that ambushed bonnie and clyde was made up of six people. manny galt, ted hinton, henderson jordan and prentiss oakley. they all hated each other. they give conflicting versions of the ambushed afterwards, each trying to make themselves look at the heroes and everybody else, not heroes. the car, after the ambush, was returned by one of them, who wanted to keep the money. it had been stolen from kansas. the owner sold it, bullet holes and all. to a man named charles stanley, who billed himself as the crime dr. and took the cars around all over the country with the lecture that crime does not pay. he hired and must mother, john dillinger's father and clyde's
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mother and father to come along. he had a slideshow that was mostly pictures and mugshots of clyde and john dillinger. when he would give his lecture, he would talk about how bonnie and clyde were sold out. frank hamer always wanted to protect his sources. that they had nothing to do with it. when stanley took his show into austin, texas, during the show, , toldhamer leapt onstage stanley to get out of town, slapped his face with a huge hand so far he knocked him down and destroyed his slides. a second set of slides and he kept taking the car around, but not texas because he was afraid of frank hamer. when he finally brought it back to show it off at the state fair, he hired two bodyguards to protect him from frank hamer.
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two of theuards were dallas deputies who were in the ambush. that is how much this has hated each other. cw never existed. composite of several members of the barrow gang. that is one of the reasons that this movie is not historically accurate. he was equalcw metson. jones and there was no cw. >> blanche, when she got out of she struck up a relationship with the coffeys. when she got out of jail, she spent time with them. they were wonderful folks. mrs. coffee was
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here, and we could introduce her to the crowd. would you stand up, this is the widow of sheriff coffey. if you want to talk about real heroes, let's talk about this lady and her husband. blanche had the sentence to prison for shooting at him. her and fred -- were friends to her, protected her, there are good people in the story and they are two of them. it is such an honor to have you here tonight and we all treasure your husband's memory. [applause] jeff: it is getting toward the witching hour, so may we do to mark questions. i would be happy to sign books for you, and let me assure you, "go down together" is the perfect book for any occasion.
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would you talk into the microphone? i should whisper this because i want to know if the real clyde -- jeff: yes? let me take the pressure off you. this is one of my favorite stories. movies, you may have noticed there was a hint that clyde was, shall we say, a tad underdeveloped in the romance department. we will be tactful. people have wondered whether this was true. there is a fabulous historian in texas and he decided he was going to get to the bottom of this. clyde had several girlfriends before bonnie and one was a woman named eleanor b. williams. john neil found her. as he described it to me, this
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is a lovely, elderly lady. he has come to see her because he wants to ask the question. he is trying to think, how do i put this in words? she is telling stories about that clyde, he was so self-conscious about his height, that we would take our picture together, he would want to stand on the curb so he would look strong -- color. -- taller. he finally could not do it. she said, you want to know, don't you? he said, yes ma'am. he said, she drew herself up and said, honey, he did not have any trouble at all. i will take her word for it. she was there. one more question? let's give attention to the folks in the back.
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that clyde was so good at stealing cars, why does he start robbing banks? he had bigger dreams then settling for what you could get. -- get from reselling a stolen car. he wanted to lead a raid on the prison he was at an free all the prisoners. he needed more money for that than he could get otherwise. he was a pathetic bandit. most times, they came away without any money. once they got chased away and german into a herd of hogs and killed a couple of picks. when they did a lot off a successful robbery in minnesota, they came away with $1600. they were silver dollars and they had to try to run down the street looking like santa claus. he had a lot of ambition. he did not have that the skills
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to achieve them. i'm honored that you came. this was exciting for me. this is a wonderful facility. i have they keep doing these programs. i will be over here if you want to get a book signed or ask any more questions. go missouri. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] histories bookshelf features some of the best-known american history writers of the past decade talking about their books. you can watch our weekly series every saturday here on american history tv on c-span3. this weekend, on american history tv, historian henry louis gates talks about reconstruction and the subsequent jim crow laws used in southern states to reestablish white supremacy. here is a preview.
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systematically, step-by-step, the reductionist's, the former confederates, wrote the south will rise again and the disenfranchised those black men. they did it in such a clever way. you could -- what are you going to do with the amendments that were ratified? u.k. rid of them. -- you cannot get rid of them. you could go around them. the mississippi plan. there were constitutions that unfolded over the next 16 years in each of the former confederate states. that's when they established poll taxes, literacy tests, coverage -- comprehension tests that only a law professor could possibly understand. do you want to know how dramatically effective these state constitutional conventions were? louisiana, one of the
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majority black states, in 1898, before their state constitutional convention, had 130,000 black men registered. the new constitution was ratified in 1898. of 130,000at number black men registered to vote had 42.n reduced to 1340 -- 13 2000 black men were elected to office during the reconstruction period. the last reconstruction congressman george henry white bids farewell to the congress in 1901. they would not be another black man elected to the congress until 1929, when oscar decrease dupuis all- oscar of those black people went from
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northsippi to chicago because of the 15th amendment. they had the right to vote. they vote on northerner in to the congress. >> learn more about the aftermath of reconstruction this sunday at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. eastern. explore our nation's past, here on american history tv. american history tv products are now available at the new c-span online store. go to c-span store.org to see what is new for american history tv and check out all of the c-span products. next, on american history tv, university of maryland baltimore county history professor george derek musgrove talks about race and the district of columbia during the early republic and antebellum.
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he is the co-author of "chocolate city: a history of race and democracy in the nation's capital." we recorded the interview at an author event hosted by the association for the study of african american life and history. cowrite aided to story about race and democracy in washington dc. why did you decide to narrow it down to washington dc and why not give yourself a more narrow window of time? jeff: we wrote about the sea because there was a need. there were a lot of new residents who wanted to know what they're getting into. watchingidents were the city said the way and wanted to understand and make sure that other people knew their story. there hasn't been a good book on race in 50 years in d.c.. we wanted to fill that void. it 400 years made is because most of the books about the city have neglected some o

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